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Saturday, November 04, 2017

Don Draper Rules: Russian Ads and American Madness

So we’ve finally seen some of the social media ads which we are told skewed the entire election in 2016 and constituted a key part of the internet assault on America launched by Vladimir Putin’s “troll army.”

Or if their name contains Cyrillic characters. Or if they ever tweet in Russian. Or if they have ever logged in from any Russian IP address — even a single time. Twitter says:

“We considered an account to be Russian-linked if it had even one of the relevant criteria.”

Not even Glenn Beck would draw so many far-fetched connections. One glance at the Twitter criteria tells you that it could enroll every single Russian dissident into Putin’s “troll army.” I personally know several people in Russia who are adamantly opposed to Putin and all he stands for — and have put their lives on the line for their beliefs. According to Twitter — and the US Congress, the mainstream media, the Democratic Party and innumerable liberal commentators — these people are also part of Putin’s “troll army.” Even a single log-in from any Russian IP address makes you part of the troll army. (What if you were visiting Russian dissident friends and checked your Facebook on their computer? Why, you’re a Kremlin stooge, pal, and don’t try to deny it.) Even people who have left Russia — maybe even fled from Putin — but still, use their native language in their tweets can now be counted as part of the troll army. Essentially, any social media post that can be remotely tied to Russia in any possible way can be seen as part of Putin’s assault on American democracy — no matter what it says, who wrote it, or where they wrote it, or why.

This is madness. Absolute madness. It demonizes and criminalizes Russians and people connected to Russians far more extensively than we saw even in McCarthyite times. At least in those days, a Russian dissident couldn’t be accused of being a Kremlin stooge for writing a communication in his or her native language. Or using the Russian postal service. But that’s where we are now.

So back to those ads. Congressional committees have released images of “Russian-linked” ads which apparently “reached” 150 million Americans. I assume that means they appeared somewhere on a social media page of 150 million Americans at some point; how many people read them or even noticed them is another matter. Of course, the social media companies like to pretend to advertisers that readers devour every ad and promoted post; that’s how they make their money, after all. But apparently no one in Congress uses social media; if they did, they would know that normal human beings ignore 99 percent of the ad crap that litters their Facebook and Twitter feeds. But anyway, after many months, we’ve at last seen some of these history-changing ads which came, according to criteria that are never quite clear, from Russia’s “troll farms.”

What did we see? Hillary Clinton in a devil costume boxing with Jesus. A Clinton-backing Satan arm-wrestling with Jesus. Pro-gun memes. Anti-immigrant memes. Memes about military-hating Democrats. Basically, the same sort of things your cranky uncle or Foxicated cousin has been sending around on email for the past 20 years.

The idea that someone could be dissuaded from voting for Hillary Clinton because of something like this is absurd. (“Ah was sure gonna vote for Mizzus Clinton until Ah saw Jeeezus didn’t like her none! Now Ah’m votin’ fer Trump!”) Anyone “swayed” by this kind of thing would already be committed to voting for Trump or any rightwing candidate. Yet we’re supposed to believe that a handful of crude ads like this were far more effective than Clinton’s hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ads. If that’s the case, then Madison Avenue should hire Putin; he’s the new Don Draper.

This has nothing to do with the Trump campaign’s obvious scheming for advantage with any dirty dealers they could find, including the Russians. (Although even the worst allegations of Trump’s collusion fall far short of the Reagan-Bush pre-election deal with the Iranians to keep holding Americans hostage until after the 1980 vote. There were mountains of credible evidence about this coming out after the equally treasonous Iran-Contra scandal –until Bill Clinton quashed the investigation, as he did other probes into Bush I. Now, of course, George Herbert Groper Bush refers to Clinton as his “son.” Yet a company I once worked for had a financial advisor who spent hours bragging how he and his cronies funneled millions of dollars in dirty money from Europe into Bush I’s secret campaign slush fund in ’92. I know we’re supposed to love the Bushes now, but the record of their corrupt collusion with dirty dealers, foreign and domestic, to subvert the democratic process could fill a library.)

And no, this is not to say Russia wasn’t monkeying around in American politics — as foreign powers have done since time immemorial, and as the US has done, to the nth degree, in the politics of other countries (including just invading them and overthrowing the government). But this seems to be a dangerous focus to me. First of all, it distracts from the very real and very vast damage that Trump’s administration is wreaking on the American system — and the natural environment — through the actions of his appointees. What Scott Pruitt is doing at the EPA, for example, far outweighs the negligible (and unprovable) effect of a few Facebook ads.

Second, it is driving us toward more and more constrictions on free speech, while also putting tech companies in charge of deciding on the political “trustworthiness” of websites, news organizations and individuals. Is this what we want? I’m not talking about open hate sites or calls for violence; I’m talking about the parameters we’re seeing used by the many groups suddenly springing up to determine “Russian influence.” Some of these guidelines include “material critical of US policy in Syria” or of US policy in general, or even stories about BLM or the pipeline protests. These groups — some of them anonymous, some of them made up of neocons and warhawks — are supplying the “information” being used in most news stories and Congressional hearings on the subject. Is this what we want? Google and a gaggle of anonymous militarists to determine whether we are following the correct political line or not? To be able to accuse anyone who questions US policy of being a Russian dupe or even a Russian agent? Is this really where we want to go? Because that’s where many Democrats are taking us.

It’s all a bit confusing. First we were told that Macedonian teenagers had swayed the election with fake news posts. Then we were told that Vladimir Putin personally directed a campaign to “hack” the election with his troll army, because he had made a deal with Donald Trump and hated Hillary Clinton. Now it turns out that many of the ads and posts from the nebulously-defined “troll army” also attacked Trump or dealt with controversial (and clickbaity) political topics — guns, BLM, etc. — from all sides of the political spectrum — so we’re told that Putin didn’t want Trump to win either, he just wanted to sow chaos in the United States. (Now, why a Russian leader — even a brutal authoritarian like Putin — would want to see a country with a thousand nuclear missiles pointed right at him break down into unstable chaos where anything might happen, including a nutball president launching a nuclear war, is hard to fathom.)

2. What really happened in 2016 is this. Hillary Clinton ran a very bad campaign (just as she did in 2008), depending on computer models and vacuous, contentless advertising and celebrity endorsements, playing fast and loose with the nominating process, and offering a nation hankering for major change little more than “it’s my turn now.” She didn’t campaign in the economically ravaged areas where a sliver of voters turned the Electoral College vote. She did have an actual public record (not the rightwing fantasy) that legitimately made actual “progressives” find her candidacy distasteful (although the overwhelming majority of them voted for her anyway). And yes, she faced an onslaught of outrageous lies and scandal-mongering and scabrous misogyny by the powerful rightwing press and rightwing Congress and on social media.

But guess what? She actually won the election anyway. If the United States was not saddled with the 18th-century elitist contraption of the Electoral College, Trump would not be president, no matter how many “Jesus” ads Vladimir Putin posted on Facebook. And if the Democrats had fought with all their might against the years-long Republican campaign to restrict voting among Democratic constituencies, which suppressed hundreds of thousands of votes in key states, then she would have won the Electoral College as well.

The Democrats have lost two presidential elections in this century due to the Electoral College — which means the actual choice of American voters has been overturned twice in past 16 years alone due to that 18th-century elitist contraption expressly designed to prevent the American people from choosing their leader by popular vote. Yet the Democrats do nothing about this. Perhaps because they’re quite willing also to take power even if they lose the popular vote. This actually would have happened in 2004 had the Republicans not illegally skewed the Ohio vote with their machinations to give the state to Bush. If Kerry, who almost certainly actually won the state, had gotten its electoral votes, then he would have been president, despite Bush outpolling him by 3 million in the popular vote.

So Clinton lost because the Democratic Party is not truly committed to the democratic process. They don’t really want to get rid of the Electoral College because it might be to their institutional advantage someday — the popular will be damned. And they apparently aren’t very concerned about the fact that millions of their potential voters have been rigorously disenfranchised, with millions more facing the same fate. Their passivity in the face of this is harder to explain; I honestly can’t understand why they haven’t made this a thundering, constant scandal year after year, or why Barack Obama didn’t use his popularity and his bully pulpit to denounce it and call for change. Trump established a presidential commission to look into the transparently bogus, totally baseless issue of “voter fraud”; couldn’t Obama have appointed a commission to look into the very real, thoroughly documented problem of voter disenfranchisement?

Again: if the US had a genuinely democratic process for electing its leader, Clinton would be president. But she is not the president, because of the anti-democratic elitist contraption of the Electoral College. She is not the president because Republicans — not Russians — have systematically disenfranchised millions of likely Democratic voters across the country over the course of several years. Without these factors, she would be president right now — which was the actual choice of the voters.

It seems to me it would be more productive to focus on these thoroughly homegrown factors — the factors that are actually costing the party these elections, the factors that are actually corroding American democracy — instead of the near-total, tunnel-vision focus on Don Draper’s super-magic Facebook ads, where a $100,000 of sporadic Jesus cartoons outweighs $500 million of all-pervasive Hollywood-produced campaign spots.

That’s not to say we should ignore Russian meddling in our elections. But here too, I would take a broader focus and also consider meddling by Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, China and other countries who also push pure propaganda through social media.

Even more importantly, I would focus on the meddling of the vast “troll farms” and propaganda mills and astroturf front groups and so-called think tanks and websites and publications controlled by our own, all-American oligarchs: our Kochs, our Mercers, our oil tycoons, etc., who spread so many lies, stoke so much division and manipulate our democratic process at every turn. Can we have some more outrage, some more focus — some more action — about that?

Chris Floyd is a columnist for CounterPunch Magazine. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at www.chris-floyd.com.

Do I have to set my hat on fire?

I released a movie last year, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, that told exactly how Trump and his billionaire buddies were going to steal the election.

DID ANYONE LISTEN?

YOU did — but the Dummycrats and the pin-head media already bought their party dress for Hillary’s inauguration.

So I’m trying again:

Today, this moment, I’m releasing the new Trump-Stole-It update of our hit film. DOWNLOAD IT HERE NOW

I was going to sub-title it: "This time, pay attention!" But instead, the new subtitle is: The Case of the Stolen Election.

It will be released commercially next year. But you can get it right now — here, and only here, for a tax-deductible donation to the Palast Investigative Fund.

Warning: If you get "Best Democracy" on Amazon or iTunes, you’re getting the OLD version.

The NEW edition tells you exactly how Trump pulled off the heist. Follow me as I hunt for 75,355 missing ballots in the snows of Michigan. And as I find the voters from Ohio to Arizona who were shafted out of their vote. Voters of color — Hispanic, Asian-American, Black — and all "Blue."

Get the download of the feature length film right now, right here; or donate for the DVD which comes off the presses in one week — which I’ll sign and personalize for you. Note: Donate for the new DVD and you also get a download link today.

Did you already get the old DVD for a donation to the Palast Fund? If so, you’ll get the new film’s download link automatically at no charge.

We sure could use the donation: Right now, the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, League of Women Voters, Indivisible and NAACP have launched lawsuits and legislation based directly on the findings of our film and my Rolling Stone reports. I remain the only journalist with the actual Crosscheck purge lists, the millions of voters secretly targeted by Trump’s Vote-Thief-in-Chief Kris Kobach. We need to get our hands on new evidence for the legal teams.

But that’s not enough. We need to keep digging. Can you help us? Help us before they shoplift the 2018 and 2020 elections.

The new edition of our film retains the best stuff of the old version: The jump at the Hampton’s dinner of Steve Mnuchin’s billionaire partner, "JP The Foreclosure King," Willie Nelson as a stoner musician (he plays the part remarkably well), Rosario Dawson, Law & Order detectives Ice-T and Richard Belzer — and Shailene Woodley who takes me back to Sun Valley, California, where I grew up with my school chum, Steve Paddock. Yes, THAT Paddock.

Does our work matter? Right now, the Governorship of Virginia is in the balance — and Kobach had the state remove 79,000 voters — a list with a whole lot of Black names. That could be the election — or the Congress in 2018, or the re-election of Agent Orange in 2020. This isn’t about Republicans and Democrats, it’s about the return of Jim Crow as Dr. James Crow, database magician.

And if you can make a donation of $500 or $1,000, we can list you as a Producer (or Co-Producer) of the special Activist Version of the film commissioned by the Reverend Jesse Jackson for showing in 1,000 churches. (It’s also scheduled for showing at 67 colleges and at 13 training sessions of the ACLU).

Most important, share this note, get the film, download it now, or get the DVD (which includes an instant download link), and watch it with people prepared to laugh, to cry, to get angry enough to stand up and make America great again — because what made us great is The Vote.

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In the right-wing daily ABC, Alejandre affirmed that his plans for domestic military intervention are part of similar plans by NATO countries across Europe and North America.

“Just like our allies,” he said, “we are developing plans to, among other things, defend critical infrastructure, take action in response to catastrophes or crisis situations, react to external threats, fight terrorism or engage in collective defense in the context of the [NATO] Atlantic alliance.”

Apparently to assure readers that the Spanish army is not preparing a coup, Alejandre immediately added:

“Naturally, our plans take into account that the Armed Forces are tools serving the Spanish Nation, and that the executive branch must decide on the time and form of an intervention.”

Alejandre stressed, however, that Catalonia was a target of Spanish war planning. He called the Catalan independence movement “the greatest threat to our democracy.” To prepare the Spanish army for its tasks, he wrote, “I must take into account the accord adopted by the Senate on October 27, which noted ‘the extraordinary gravity of the disobedience of constitutional obligations, and the carrying out of actions gravely contrary to the general interest, by the institutions of the Catalan regional government.’”

Having singled out the threat supposedly posed by Catalonia, Alejandre continued:

“History shows that, if need be, Spain’s people and also its armed forces know how to defend our Nation.”

Hailing Spanish soldiers “of all epochs,” he declared,

“Our history is replete with examples where the Spanish military put its love for Spain before all other considerations...”

Alejandre’s claim that Catalan separatism is the greatest threat to Spanish democracy is an absurd political lie: the main threat comes from Madrid and the army.

His comments are a warning that Spain and the whole European Union (EU) are moving towards dictatorship. Alejandre’s assurances that there will be no coup are an evasion. Madrid launched an all-out confrontation with Catalonia during the October 1 Catalan independence referendum, which it sought to block through a violent police crackdown. As it decapitates the Catalan government and tries to install its unelected viceroys in Barcelona in the face of mass protests, Madrid doubtless plans to rely on the security forces even more than during the referendum.

His praise for the Spanish army’s role during “all epochs” is a chilling threat that must serve as a warning to workers across Europe. Over the last century, apart from its aggressive and bloodthirsty colonial wars in North Africa, the Spanish army has had only one target: the Spanish people.

The last time the Spanish army marched into Catalonia, in January 1939 under the command of fascist Generalissimo Francisco Franco at the end of the Spanish Civil War, it carried out mass executions of its political opponents in order to crush revolutionary struggles of the working class.

The threat of domestic military intervention in Spain, amid a state of emergency in neighboring France and escalating demands for Internet censorship in Washington, is the product of a mortal crisis of capitalism.

After a quarter century of escalating militarism and austerity measures since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and particularly since the 2008 Wall Street crash, the EU is discredited. With tens of millions of workers unemployed and living standards falling in much of Europe, the ruling class is terrified of rising social anger and moving towards dictatorship.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) government is ruthlessly attacking the Catalan bourgeois nationalists to show that no opposition will be tolerated. Independence referendums had been held peacefully in Quebec in Canada or in Scotland in the UK. Nonetheless, Madrid deliberately inflamed the Catalan conflict, assaulting peaceful voters during the October 1 referendum and then rejecting Catalan president Carles Puigdemont’s suspension of a declaration of independence and appeals for dialogue.

Madrid’s main target is opposition in the working class, and in its assault on Catalonia it is acting with contempt for the Spanish people. Despite weeks of non-stop anti-Catalan propaganda in the press, polls suggest growing opposition in Spain to Madrid’s crushing of Catalan self-rule. In a recent El Mundo poll, 57 percent of Spaniards and 76 percent of Catalans wanted a peaceful Catalan independence referendum to be held, whilst large majorities opposed independence.

Nevertheless, Madrid aims to seize the Catalan regional state apparatus and impose austerity and militarism at the behest of the EU, which is has backed Madrid and demanded that—despite the Catalan crisis—it continue to cut social spending to meet EU budget deficit criteria.

Yesterday, Spanish courts jailed Catalan ministers including Oriol Junqueras (Deputy President), Jordi Turull (spokesperson), Raul Romeva (foreign affairs) and Joaquin Form (interior). Accused of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement over the October 1 referendum and the October 27 declaration of independence, they face up to 30 years in jail.

Ousted Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont and four regional ministers who fled to Belgium on Monday also face arrest. Spain’s Public Prosecutor is demanding the High Court issue European Arrest Warrants. Charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement have also been leveled at the Catalan Parliament Speaker Carme Forcadell and five members of the Speaker’s Committee.

This ruthless response was not meted out to one accused minister, Santi Vila, who resigned at the last minute before the independence vote last Friday. He was not jailed, but released on €50,000 bail. Vila was greeted with shouts of “traitor”, “coward”, and “now the police protect you” on his arrival at court. He is clearly being groomed as the contender in the December 21 election that Madrid has demanded be organized in Catalonia.

The only way forward to oppose the turn by Madrid and the EU towards dictatorship is the independent mobilization of the working class across Spain and Europe in a revolutionary, socialist and internationalist struggle—against not only Madrid and the EU, but also the Catalan nationalists.

The latter, having run pro-austerity administrations in Barcelona for decades, advance the reactionary perspective of building a separate capitalist state in Catalonia oriented to the EU.

While Madrid and the Puigdemont government are engaged in an increasingly bitter struggle against each other, they are also closing ranks against the working class. Both are seeking a deal at the expense of the workers, based on the EU’s ever more militarized austerity policy. In Brussels, Puigdemont repeated his appeals to the EU to broker a deal with Madrid, and acquiesced to Rajoy’s call for December 21 elections, calling them a “democratic plebiscite.”

A rally was organized by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium in Barcelona. The city’s mayor, Ada Colau, councilors of her Podemos-backed BComú coalition, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT), and the petty-bourgeois Candidature of Popular Unity (CUP) attended. Colau proposed an amnesty and the annulment of Article 155 after the December 21 elections as “minimum points” for reconciliation and a return to “democratic normality” in Catalonia.

Colau’s government has voted to recognise Puigdemont’s administration as “the legitimate Government of Catalonia”, rejected the application of Article 155 and “the authoritarian and threatening response of the State.” It rejected a CUP motion to “recognize the proclamation of the Catalan Republic” on October 27.

Similar proposals are being made by strategists of the ruling class internationally. In an editorial, the New York Times wrote,

“For the moment, Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, armed with the country’s Constitution, appeared to have taken the upper hand”.

However, it warned,

“Rajoy’s unyielding stance could backfire if the standoff continues. The violent tactics of the Spanish police in trying to break up the referendum left bitter feelings in Catalonia, and more strong-arm tactics, should Catalans defy Madrid, could further shift sympathies—perhaps outside Spain as well”.

The newspaper counseled de-escalation and relying on the bankruptcy of the union bureaucracy and its political allies, like the Podemos party, to strangle working class opposition.

Thursday, November 02, 2017

From the Ground Up

On a recent Friday at the Afghan Peace Volunteers‘ (APV) Borderfree Center, here in Kabul, thirty mothers sat cross-legged along the walls of a large meeting room. Masoumah, who co-coordinates the Center’s “Street Kids School” project, had invited the mothers to a parents’ meeting.

Burka-clad women who wore the veil over their faces looked identical to me, but Masoumah called each mother by name, inviting the mothers, one by one, to speak about difficulties they faced. From inside the netted opening of a burka, we heard soft voices and, sometimes, sheer despair.

Masoumah invites Afghan mothersto speak about difficulties they face (Photo: Afghan Peace Volunteers)
Others who weren’t wearing burkas also spoke gravely. Their eyes expressed pain and misery, and some quietly wept. Often a woman’s voice would break, and she would have to pause before she could continue.

“I have debts that I cannot pay,” whispered the first woman

“My children and I are always moving from place to place. I don’t know what will happen.”

“I am afraid we will die in an explosion.”

“My husband is paralyzed and cannot work. We have no money for food, for fuel.”

“My husband is old and sick. We have no medicine.”

“I cannot feed my children.”

“How will we live through the winter?”

“I have pains throughout my whole body.”

“I feel hopeless.”

“I feel depressed, and I am always worried.”

“I feel that I’m losing my mind.”

The mothers’ travails echo across Afghanistan, where “one-third of the population lives below the poverty line (earning less than $2 a day) and a further 50 percent are barely above this.” Much of the suffering voiced was common: most of the women had to support their families as they moved from house to house, not being able to come up with the rent for a more permanent space, and many women experienced severe body pains, often a result of chronic stress.

Last week, our friend Turpekai visited the Borderfree Center and spoke with dismay about her family’s well having gone dry. Later that morning, Inaam, one of the students in the “Street Kids School,” said that his family faces the same problem. Formerly, wells dug to depths of 20 to 30 meters were sufficient to reach the water table. But now, with the water table dropping an average of one meter a year, new wells must be dug to depths of 80 meters or more. Inflowing refugees create increased demands on the water table in times of drought and so do the extravagant water needs of an occupying military, and the world’s largest fortified embassy, that can dig as deep for water as it wants. Families living on less than $2 a day have little wherewithal to dig deep wells or begin paying for water. The water has been lost to war.

Sarah Ball, a nurse from Chicago, arrived in Kabul one week ago. Together we visited the Emergency Surgical Center for Victims of War, feeling acutely grateful for an opportunity to donate blood and hear an update from one of their logistical coordinators about new circumstances they encounter in Kabul.

In past visits to Kabul, staff at the Emergency Hospital would point happily to their volleyball court, the place where they could find diversion and release from tensions inherent in their life-saving work. Now, as an average of two “mass casualties” happen each week, often involving many dozens of patients severely injured by war, a triage unit has replaced the volleyball court. Kabul, formerly one of the safest places in Afghanistan, has now become one of the most dangerous.

The Taliban and other armed groups have vowed to continue fighting as long as the U.S. continues to occupy Afghan land, to wage attacks on Afghans and supply weapons to the various fighting factions. The United States maintains nine major bases in Afghanistan and many smaller forward operating bases.

Following President Trump’s announcement of an increase in U.S. troops being sent to Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported that “Direct U.S. spending on the war in Afghanistan will rise to approximately $840.7 billion if the president’s fiscal year 2018 budget is approved.”

What on earth have they accomplished?!

Masoumah asked each mother a second question: What are you thankful for? The atmosphere became a little less grim as many of the mothers said they were grateful for their children. Beholding the lively, bright and beautiful youngsters who fill the Border Free Center each Friday, I could well understand their gratitude. The following day, we joined two dozen young girls living in a squalid refugee camp. Crowded into a small makeshift classroom with a mud floor, our friend Nematullah taught a two-hour class focused on forming peace circles. The little girls were radiant, exuberant and eager for better futures. Nematullah later told us that all their families are internally displaced, many because of war.

I feel deeply moved by the commitment my young friends have made to reject wars and dominance, preferring instead to live simply, share resources, and help protect the environment.

Zarghuna works full-time to coordinate projects at the Border Free Center. She and Masoumah feel passionately committed to social change which they believe will be organized “from the ground up.” I showed Zarghuna a Voices accounting sheet tallying donations entrusted to us for the Street Kids School and The Duvet Project. I wanted to assure her of grass roots support from people giving what they can. “Big amounts of money coming from the U.S. military destroys us,” Zarghuna said. “But small amounts that are given to the people can help change lives and make them a little better.”

Wednesday, November 01, 2017

This Week on GR

Spain's constitutional crisis geared up last week with the unilateral declaration of independence issued from the separatist Catalonia government of Carles Puigdumont.

Predictably, Madrid made good on it's threat to turf out the regional government, and went further: arresting those in the pro- Independence leadership that hadn't already slipped out of the country, banning the independence movement outright, and taking over Catalunya's media, police, and government bureaucracy.

The lament going up today in Spain is for the death of democracy, a haunting reminder of the country's not so distant fascist past.

Dr. Pablo Ouziel is a Post-Doctoral fellow at UVic whose project in progress is, ‘Towards Democratic Responses to the Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Forms of Participatory and Representative Civic Engagement.’

Pablo Ouziel in the first half.

And; the Pop-Up Prayer Vigil encampment has moved along to Saanich. The ongoing homelessness camp and protest site has been on the move weekly, spending the last few weeks at various locations in Oak Bay; much to the consternation of local authorities, residents, and an increasingly hostile local media. Chrissy Brett is spokesperson, and self-described "head cat herder" for the Vigil/Protest movement. I spoke with her a few days ago about what they hope to accomplish.

Chrissy Brett keeping a vigil for homelessness in the second segment.

And; activist efforts to ban the capture and incarceration of whales and dolphins scored a major victory in Vancouver earlier this year when City Council voted to ban the practice, despite intense lobbying by the Vancouver Aquarium and its industry allies. That victory wasn't the end of the struggle, nor even the beginning of the end; but perhaps it was, as Winston 'the Whale' Churchill would say, "the end of beginning" of the campaign to stop world-wide the obviously barbarous practice of cetacean imprisonment.

Camille Labchuk is Executive Director of Animal Justice, an organization dedicated to looking out for the legal interests of animals, exposing cruel and systemic practices creating animal suffering both in the wild and in agriculture, and seeking meaningful policy changes to redress those practices.

Camille Labchuk and whales (and dolphins) for the saving in the final segment.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin. But first, Pablo Ouziel and Spanish democracy's dark night of the soul breaking on an uncertain morning.

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Chrystia Freeland: Canada doesn’t engage in “regime change”

A huge surprise to the people of Libya, Haiti, Honduras, Chile, Democratic Rep. Congo, Ghana, Uganda, Guatemala, and ...

It may walk and quack like a regime-change-promoting duck, but Ottawa’s unilateral sanctions and support for Venezuela’s opposition is actually just a cuddly Canadian beaver, says Chrystia Freeland.

“Canada has never been an imperialist power. It’s even almost funny to say that phrase: we’ve been the colony,” said the journalist turned politician after a Toronto meeting of foreign ministers opposed to the Venezuelan government.

The above declaration was part of the Canadian foreign minister’s response to a question about Chavismo’s continued popularity, which was prefaced by a mention of protesters denouncing Ottawa’s interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs. Freeland added that “one of the strengths Canada brings to its international affairs” is that it doesn’t engage in “regime change”.

Notwithstanding her government’s violation of the UN and Organization of American States charters’ in Venezuela, Freeland’s claim that Ottawa doesn’t engage in “regime change” is laughable. Is she unaware that a Canadian General commanded the NATO force, which included Canadian fighter jets, naval vessels and special forces, that killed Muammar Gaddafi in Libya six years ago?

Sticking to contexts more directly applicable to the situation in Venezuela, Ottawa has repeatedly endorsed US-backed military coups against progressive elected leaders.

In a more substantial contribution to undermining electoral democracy, Ottawa backed the Honduran military’s removal of elected president Manuel Zelaya. Before his 2009 ouster Canadian officials criticized Zelaya and afterwards condemned his attempts to return to the country. Failing to suspend its military training program, Canada was also the only major donor to Honduras — the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America — that failed to sever any aid to the military government. Six months after the coup Ottawa endorsed an electoral farce and immediately recognized the new right-wing government.

In the 1960s Ottawa played a more substantial role in the ouster of pan-Africanist independence leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba. In 1966 Ghana’s Canadian-trained army overthrew Nkrumah. In an internal memo to External Affairs just after Nkrumah was ousted, Canadian high commissioner in Accra, C.E. McGaughey wrote,

“...a wonderful thing has happened for the West in Ghana and Canada has played a worthy part.”

Soon after the coup, Ottawa informed the military junta that Canada intended to carry on normal relations and Canada sent $1.82 million ($15 million today) worth of flour to Ghana.

Ottawa had a strong hand in Patrice Lumumba’s demise. Canadian signals officers oversaw intelligence positions in the UN mission supposed to protect the territorial integrity of the newly independent Congo, but which Washington used to undermine the progressive independence leader.

Canadian Colonel Jean Berthiaume assisted Lumumba’s political enemies by helping recapture him. The UN chief of staff, who was kept in place by Ottawa despite being labelled an “imperialist tool” by Lumumba’s advisers, tracked the deposed prime minister and informed army head Joseph Mobutu of Lumumba’s whereabouts. Soon after Lumumba was killed and Canadian officials celebrated the demise of an individual Prime Minister John Diefenbaker privately called a “major threat to Western interests”.

It’s in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation where Canada was most aggressive in opposing a progressive government. On January 31 and February 1, 2003, Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government organized an international gathering to discuss overthrowing Haiti’s elected government. No Haitian officials were invited to the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” where high-level US, Canadian and French officials decided that president Jean-Bertrand Aristide “must go”, the dreaded army should be recreated and that the country would be put under a Kosovo-like UN trusteeship.

Thirteen months after the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” meeting Aristide and most other elected officials were pushed out and a quasi UN trusteeship had begun. The Haitian National Police was also heavily militarized.

Canadian special forces “secured” the airport from which Aristide was bundled (“kidnapped” in his words) onto a plane by US Marines and deposited in the Central African Republic. Five hundred Canadian troops occupied Haiti for the next six months.

After cutting off aid to Haiti’s elected government, Ottawa provided tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid to the installed government, publicly supported coup officials and employed numerous officials within coup government ministries.

Haiti’s deputy justice minister for the first 15 months of the foreign-installed government, Philippe Vixamar, was on the Canadian International Development Agency’s payroll and was later replaced by another CIDA employee (the minister was a USAID employee). Paul Martin made the first ever trip by a Canadian prime minister to Haiti to support the violent post-coup dictatorship.

Dismissing criticism of Ottawa’s regime change efforts in Venezuela by claiming Canada has been a benevolent international actor is wholly unconvincing. In fact, a serious look at this country’s foreign policy past gives every reason to believe that Ottawa is seeking to unseat an elected government that has angered many among the corporate set.

Anyone with their eyes open can tell the difference between a beaver and a duck.

Sorting Out the Russia Mess

Exclusive:The U.S. mainstream media finally has its “smoking gun” on Russia-gate — incriminating information from a junior Trump campaign adviser — but a closer look reveals serious problems with the “evidence,” writes Robert Parry.

Russia-gate special prosecutor Robert Mueller has turned up the heat on President Trump with the indictment of Trump’s former campaign manager for unrelated financial crimes and the disclosure of a guilty plea from a low-level foreign policy adviser for lying to the FBI.

While longtime Republican fixer Paul Manafort, who helped guide Trump’s campaign to the GOP nomination in summer 2016, was the big name in the news on Monday, the mainstream media focused more on court documents related to George Papadopoulos, a 30-year-old campaign aide who claims to have heard about Russia possessing Hillary Clinton’s emails before they became public on the Internet, mostly via WikiLeaks.

While that would seem to bolster the Russia-gate narrative – that Russian intelligence “hacked” Democratic emails and President Vladimir Putin ordered the emails be made public to undermine Clinton’s campaign – the evidentiary thread that runs through Papadopoulos’s account remains tenuous.

That’s in part because his credibility has already been undermined by his guilty plea for lying to the FBI and by the fact that he now has a motive to provide something the prosecutors might want in exchange for leniency. Plus, there is the hearsay and contested quality of Papadopoulos’s supposed information, some of which already has turned out to be false.

According to the court documents, Papadopoulos got to know a professor of international relations who claimed to have “substantial connections with Russian government officials,” with the professor identified in press reports as Joseph Mifsud, a little-known academic associated with the University of Stirling in Scotland.

The first contact supposedly occurred in mid-March 2016 in Italy, with a second meeting in London on March 24 when the professor purportedly introduced Papadopoulos to a Russian woman whom the young campaign aide believed to be Putin’s niece, an assertion that Mueller’s investigators determined wasn’t true.

Trump, who then was under pressure for not having a foreign policy team, included Papadopoulos as part of a list drawn up to fill that gap, and Papadopoulos participated in a campaign meeting on March 31 in Washington at which he suggested a meeting between Trump and Putin, a prospect that other senior aides reportedly slapped down.

The ‘Email’ Breakfast

But Papadopoulos continued his outreach to Russia, according to the court documents, which depict the most explosive meeting as an April 26 breakfast in London with the professor (Mifsud) supposedly saying he had been in Moscow and “learned that the Russians had obtained ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Clinton” and possessed “thousands of emails.” Mainstream press accounts concluded that Mifsud must have been referring to the later-released emails.

Former Trump foreign policy adviser

George Papadopoulos.

However, Mifsud told The Washington Post in an email last August that he had “absolutely no contact with the Russian government” and described his ties to Russia as strictly in academic fields.

In an interview with the U.K. Daily Telegraph after Monday’s disclosures, Mifsud acknowledged meeting with Papadopoulos but disputed the contents of the conversations as cited in the court papers. Specifically, he denied knowing anything about emails containing “dirt” on Clinton and called the claim that he introduced Papadopoulos to a “female Russian national” as a “laughingstock.”

According to the Telegraph interview, Mifsud said he tried to put Papadopoulos in touch with experts on the European Union and introduced him to the director of a Russian think tank, the Russian International Affairs Council.

It was the latter contact that the court papers presumably referred to in saying that on May 4, the Russian contact with ties to the foreign ministry wrote to Papadopoulos and Mifsud, reporting that ministry officials were “open for cooperation,” a message that Papadopoulos forwarded to a senior campaign official, asking whether the contacts were “something we want to move forward with.”

However, even an article in The New York Times, which has aggressively pushed the Russia-gate “scandal” from the beginning, noted the evidentiary holes that followed from that point.

The Times’ Scott Shane wrote: “A crucial detail is still missing: Whether and when Mr. Papadopoulos told senior Trump campaign officials about Russia’s possession of hacked emails. And it appears that the young aide’s quest for a deeper connection with Russian officials, while he aggressively pursued it, led nowhere.”

Shane added,

“the court documents describe in detail how Mr. Papadopoulos continued to report to senior campaign officials on his efforts to arrange meetings with Russian officials, … the documents do not say explicitly whether, and to whom, he passed on his most explosive discovery – that the Russians had what they considered compromising emails on Mr. Trump’s opponent.

“J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon official who worked for the Trump campaign as a national security adviser and helped arrange the March 31 foreign policy meeting, said he had known nothing about Mr. Papadopoulos’ discovery that Russia had obtained Democratic emails or of his prolonged pursuit of meetings with Russians.”

Reasons to Doubt

If prosecutor Mueller had direct evidence that Papadopoulos had informed the Trump campaign about the Clinton emails, you would assume that the proof would have been included in Monday’s disclosures. Further, since Papadopoulos was flooding the campaign with news about his Russian outreach, you might have expected that he would say something about how helpful the Russians had been in publicizing the Democratic emails.

Hillary Clinton at the Code 2017 conference, May 31, 2017

Absence of supporting evidence Papadopoulos conveyed his hot news on the emails to campaign officials and Mifsud’s insistence that he knew nothing about them would normally raise serious questions about Papadopoulos’s credibility on this most crucial point.

At least for now, those gaps represent major holes in the storyline. But Official Washington has been so desperate for “proof” about the alleged Russian “election meddling” for so long, that professional skepticism has been unwelcome in most media outlets.

There is also another side of the story that rarely gets mentioned in the U.S. mainstream media: that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has repeatedly denied that he received the two batches of purloined Democratic emails – one about the Democratic National Committee and one about Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta – from the Russians. While it is surely possible that the Russians might have used cutouts to pass on the emails, Assange and associates have suggested that at least the DNC emails came from a disgruntled insider.

Also, former U.S. intelligence experts have questioned whether at least one batch of disclosed emails could have come from an overseas “hack” because the rapid download speed is more typical of copying files locally onto a memory stick or thumb drive.

What I was told by an intelligence source several months ago was that Russian intelligence did engage in hacking efforts to uncover sensitive information, much as U.S. and other nations’ intelligence services do, and that Democratic targets were included in the Russian effort.

But the source said the more perplexing question was whether the Kremlin then ordered release of the data, something that Russian intelligence is usually loath to do and something that in this case would have risked retaliation from the expected winner of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton.

But such questions and doubts are clearly not welcome in the U.S. mainstream media, most of which has embraced Mueller’s acceptance of Papadopoulos’s story as the long-awaited “smoking gun” of Russia-gate.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

What Da F#%k Ever Happened to the Left?

First, there was the firing of air traffic controllers that for all intents and purposes marked the beginning of the complete demise of unions. This attack against unions, along with later trade agreements, murdered the working class and part of the middle class in the U.S. Then there was the rebranding of the Vietnam War into a “noble cause.” What followed were the massive tax cuts for the wealthy that continue on as the most egregious reverse kind of welfare agenda.

And then, as if the march to the right wasn’t enough for some, there was the ascendancy of the fundamentalist religious right, the attacks against the environment (remember “trees pollute”), and the beginning of the destruction of public schooling whose necessary end was the know nothing caricature, Betsy DeVos.

It was like an unending far-right laundry list that came about because of economic malaise and as a reaction to the hostage situation in Iran.

Reagan’s kowtowing to religious fundamentalists can be seen in the religious right’s base in the Trump administration. His support of religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan had predictable results. It’s a pity that Reagan’s fascination with astrology couldn’t have given the left a head’s up about a Trump administration, but the message was there if the tea leaves were properly read and interpreted. It was sort of an eerie handwriting on the wall.

So, leftists, and even some liberals, were out in the cold, not being able to catch their breaths, sort of like being punched in the stomach full force and not seeing it coming: We still have not be able to catch our collective breath.

Ass-grabber George H.W. Bush moved Reagan’s low-intensity warfare to all-out warfare in the first war in Iraq. Remember the “turkey shoot” from the air of fleeing Iraqi soldiers on their way out of Kuwait? Remember Panama?At least we now know that the elder Bush was schooled in English literature.

Then there was Bill Clinton, another of the Vietnam-era cohort, who made neoliberalism what it is today. Some have called him the first black president. I can almost hear W.E.B. Du Bois laughing out loud about that one!

Clinton, another famous personage who had not broken a sweat during the Vietnam War, opened the floodgates of mass incarceration of people of color and grew the prison-industrial complex. He ended welfare-as-we-know-it in a capitalist economy that was outsourcing itself and leaving wage growth and job opportunities behind. And the end of Glass-Steagall was a bald-face betrayal of the moderate New Deal. Nothing was sacred to these folks!

And George W. Bush, Mr. Mission Accomplished, who is now lauded in hurricane relief efforts. Remember Katrina and the assault on civil liberties, and the intelligence failures of 9/11, and the endless wars and torture that arose from that calamity! Pete Seeger sang that “We elect them again and again.” Some voters, or those whose votes haven’t been suppressed, certainly do.

Barack Obama proved that you can fool lots of people lots of the time. He and his sycophants in Congress, elected on a platform of “hope and change,” allowed masses of people to go down faster than the Titanic in the economic debacle of 2007-2008 that made home ownership and home equity in the U.S. a bad joke for many. Their wink and nod to the military-industrial-financial complex almost certainly had to point the way and coronation of the neofascist Trump.

Those on the left who knew which way the wind blew could not have been too surprised when the neo-Nazis and neofascists finally got to the top of the heap in Washington, D.C. and in state capitols around the nation. The right had been working diligently on it since religious fundamentalists gained traction during the administration of the bumbling Great Communicator. They had even taken over seemingly innocuous positions on school boards across the country.

Now, not only leftists, but the entire planet face mass annihilation because naysayers like the Tea Party and Trump and some of his supporters want to tank the entire show.

Caitlin Johnstone writes in “Why Does The Left Attack Itself” Generations Of Government Psyops,” Greanville Post, October 26, 2017) that CounterPunch is an elitist white boy’s club, addressing one of the many disagreements and infighting that often crop up on the left:

Early on during the Reagan presidency a liberal acquaintance noted that all of the questions had been moved to the right. What did that mean?

Meanwhile the boy’s club at the acclaimed lefty outlet CounterPunch, who published eight articles about me in July, is now trying to turn their publication into even more of an elitist sausage fest than it already was by going after their own writer Diana Johnstone (no relation).

As a long-time member of the political left, it doesn’t look or feel like I belong to anything remotely resembling an “elitist sausage fest.” The left isn’t going anywhere if it can’t get organized and fight back while it conducts a political food fight. Part of the left’s history is a proven record of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.

I’m more concerned right now that the left is still dealing with a Democratic Party (which is probably long past any possible redemption) that couldn’t give a damn about progressive issues and politics and ran a neoliberal candidate like Hillary Clinton the last time around and that the power of elite wealth still holds the reins of that party.

Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer. He is the author of Against the Wall: Memoir of a Vietnam-Era War Resister (2017).

Walls and Militarized Police: How Israel Is Exporting Its Occupation to the United States

Israeli footprints are becoming more apparent in the US security apparatus. Such a fact does not bode well for ordinary Americans.

US Senate Bill S.720 should have been a wake-up call.

The Bill, drafted by the Israel lobby group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as part of its "2017 Lobbying Agenda" is set to punish any individual or company that boycotts Israel for its violation of Palestinian human rights.

The severe punishment could reach a million dollars in fines, and up to 20 years in jail. Although political boycott has been sanctioned by the US Supreme Court, the Congress wants to make a boycott of Israel the exception, even it means the subversion of US democracy.

Still, protests are largely muted. The mainstream US media is yet to take US lawmakers to task, as hundreds of those elected representatives have already endorsed the unacceptable initiative.

Criticizing Israel is still a taboo in the US, where the Congress is beholden to lobby pressures and kickbacks, and where the media's script on the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine is even less critical than Israel's own media.

However, the infiltration of the US government is not new. It is only becoming more emboldened, due to the absence of enough critical voices that are capable of creating a semblance of balance or a serious debate on the issue.

For years, ordinary US citizens have been far-removed from the entire discussion on Israel and Palestine. The subject felt alien, marred by Hollywood propaganda, religious misconception and the lack of any understanding of history.

But in recent years, Israel has become an integral part of American life, even if most people do not spot the Israeli influence.

"In the aftermath of 9/11, Israel seized on its decades-long experience as an occupying force to brand itself as a world leader in counter-terrorism," reported Alice Speri in the Intercept.

The successful branding has earned Israeli security firms billions of dollars. The massive payouts are the result of the exploitation of American fear of terrorism, while presenting Israel as a successful model of fighting terror.

In the last two decades, hundreds of top federal agents and thousands of police officers have, thus far, received training in Israel or through seminars and workshops organized on Israel’s behalf.

Groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs are, to various degrees, involved in turning the US police force into militarized units similar to the structure of the Israeli police.

As an occupying power, Israel has blurred the lines between the police and the army. In areas like occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, both apparatus behave in a similar pattern. They ‘shoot to kill’ as a result of the slightest provocation or suspicion. Sometimes, for no reason at all.

Alex Vitale, an author and a Brooklyn College professor of sociology, described the nature of the regular trips made by federal agents and police officers to Israel.

"A lot of the policing that folks are observing and being talked to about on these trips is policing that happens in a non-democratic context."

This 'non-democratic context' involves the policing, humiliating and often outright murdering of occupied Palestinians. Instead of pressuring Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinians, the US government is bringing Israeli 'expertise' to its own cities.

Indeed, the US military-like police phenomena has made local cops look more like "an occupying force" than individuals sworn to protect the public.

Israel is exporting its occupation tactics to the US, with Israeli military contractors opening subsidiaries across the country, promoting their surveillance technologies, walls, border monitoring equipment and violent tactics.

Americans should be worried, but most are oblivious to the disturbing pattern because the media rarely sheds a light on the growing Israeli military influence on American life.

An Israeli company, Elta North America, (a subsidiary of the Israel Aerospace Industry) was one of eight companies awarded a massive sum to produce a prototype for the wall that the US intends to build along the US-Mexico border.

The wall was one of the main pledges made by Trump during his campaign for the White House. Israel was the first country to rush in support of Trump's divisive words.

"President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea," tweeted Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the time.

Although his support of Trump angered Mexico and many Americans, Netanyahu knew of the lucrative investments in the years ahead only too well.

Indeed, US border security has been a major source of revenue for Israeli companies.

One such generous contracts was the one granted by the Obama Administration to the Israeli company Elbit Systems. Valued at $145-million, the company provided surveillance equipment and built towers along the Arizona/Sonora US-Mexico border.

Elbit also cashed in handsomely from Boeing in 2006 for its part in the "DHS' Strategic Border Initiative."

Magal Security System, the Israeli firm that has helped the Israeli military in tightening the siege on Gaza, is actively involved in the burgeoning US security industry, and was one of the first companies to pitch building the wall to cut off Mexico from the US.

Israel's illegal tactics are now the model through which the US plans to police its cities, monitor its borders and define its relationship with its neighbors.

But the fact is that Israeli walls are not meant for defense, but rather to annex Palestinian and Arab land, while feeding its own national phobias of threats lurking all around.

While the US’ imprudent and violent response to September 11, 2001 attacks has contributed to existing American fears of the rest of the world, Trump's isolationist policies pave the perfect ground for further Israeli infiltration of American government and society.

The evidence of all of this can now be found in major US cities, its various borders and the surveillance system that has the potential to monitor every US citizen.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

Monday, October 30, 2017

A Dripping Wet Chemical Planet

Each and every year an avalanche of toxic chemicals, amounting to 250 billion tonnes, drips over Earth, which, over time, will sanitize all life, turning the planet into a massive gooey glob that glistens dazzlingly orange, not vividly blue. Already, scientists categorize Earth as a “toxic planet.” (Source: “Scientists Categorize Earth as a ‘Toxic Planet,” Phys.Org, Feb. 7, 2017)

“Earth, and all life on it, are being saturated with man-made chemicals in an event unlike anything in the planet’s entire history,” says Julian Cribb, author of ‘Surviving the 21st Century’ (Springer International 2017), Ibid.

Nothing is spared. Mercury is found in Arctic polar bears. Honeybees are dropping like flies. Insect abundance is falling off the edge of a cliff, down 75%, which itself is an extinction event. And, drumroll please, Mt Everest’s snow is so polluted it doesn’t even meet EPA drinking water standards, absolutely true.

Dangerous levels of arsenic and cadmium have been found in snow samples taken every 1,000 feet up, according to Samantha Langely-Turnbaugh, professor of environmental science, University of Southern Maine.

So, how does this affect the human species?

Well, for starters, man-made chemical emissions are, far and away, the largest human footprint on the planet. And, here’s the strange scary aspect: It’s one of the least understood or regulated. So, even though Earth is turning into a chemically soaked sphere above and beyond the wildest of imagination, according to UN Environment Program, most of those chemicals blanketing the planet have never been screened for health concerns.

According to WWF Global research, only 14% of chemicals used in largest volumes have the minimum amount of data available to make an initial basic safety assessment. Oh, well!

So, not only is the planet saturated dripping wet with chemicals, it is largely being done in the blind. Nobody knows for sure the upshot of the biggest most gigantic of all time chemical spray in all of history as toxic chemicals literally drip off the planet. Witnessed from outer space, aliens must be horrified. No wonder they haven’t landed.

Humanity could be at risk like never before but nobody really knows for sure how or why at the very moment when worldwide capitalism is cranking faster than ever before now that state-run capitalism is so popular and ingrained in Oligarch-Heaven Russia and Red Communist China. The upshot: Considerably more unregulated chemicals at the rate of 2,000 new chemicals released every year. That’s five (5) brand new chemicals soaking the planet every day. As a result, industrial toxins are now found worldwide in newborn babies. When will humans start glowing in the dark?

Meanwhile, medical science is increasingly linking issues such as obesity, cancer, heart disease and brain disorders like autism, ADHD and depression to the massively growing titanic volume of toxic chemicals dripping off the planet.

Notably, only recently, the global threat is coming to surface, for example, a recent landmark study of insects showing a 75% falloff of abundance over 27 years. That in and of itself is an extinction event! (See Caspar A. Hallmann, et al, More Than 75 Percent Decline Over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Biomass in Protected Areas, PLOS, October 18, 2017)

Problem: People need insects a lot more than insects need people. Without insects 80% of plants will die. The plants are angiosperms, meaning they need pollination. Mass starvation ensues. There’s no way around it.

Now that the UN and the chief scientist of the UK have come out in protests of rampant peacetime chemical warfare lodged against humanity, it is all the more interesting, actually disheartening, to follow America’s leadership role in the wide, wide world of chemicals.

Beyond U.S. policy, here’s what the world, via the UN, says about pesticides:

“The current assumption underlying pesticide regulation – that chemicals that pass a battery of tests in the laboratory or in field trials are environmentally benign when they are used at industrial scales – is false,’ say the scientists,” (Source: Damian Carrington, Environmental Editor, Warning of Ecological Armageddon After Dramatic Plunge in Insect Numbers, The Guardian, October 18, 2017)

What to do? After all, it’s claimed the world will go hungry without pesticide control. However, according to a UN study, it’s a myth that pesticides are essential to feed a fast-growing population, See: “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Human Rights Council,” UN General Assembly Thirty-fourth Session, Agenda item 3, Jan. 24, 20170, to wit:

“Pesticides cause an array of harms. Runoff from treated crops frequently pollute the surrounding ecosystem and beyond, with unpredictable ecological consequences. Furthermore, reductions in pest populations upset the complex balance between predator and prey species in the food chain, thereby destabilizing the ecosystem. Pesticides can also decrease biodiversity of soils and contribute to nitrogen fixation, which can lead to large declines in crop yields, posing problems for food security… Despite grave human health risks having been well established for numerous pesticides, they remain in use.”

Try organic farming on for size and see if it fits and crop rotation and crop-cover natural farming techniques rather than industrialized chemically grown crops.

A recent New York Times exposé, “Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots” (10-21-17), delves into details about toxic changes at EPA, figuratively as well as literally a real killer of a story.

When it comes to peacetime chemical warfare, the Trump administration simply gives the finger to both the UN and the UK chief scientist, and for that matter, all scientists. Who needs’em? The Trumpeters think it is just dandy, just great to loosen up the regs. “Cease and desist overregulation” is their mantra. Let the chips fall were they may, and stop the crazy over-regulation becuz it hurts making America great again. Indeed, the Trumpeters are pure fodder for the Sixth Mass Extinction. Just what Dr. Doom ordered.

Contrariwise, there are times when science verbiage makes common sense, a lot of common sense, for example:

“Our data indicate that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.” (Source: Paul R. Ehrlich, et al, Biological Annihilation via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Declines, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 114, no. 31, May 23, 2017)

In other words “biological annihilation” is right around the corner. Isn’t that just great! Thus therefore and furthermore, ponder for a moment impending biological annihilation in the context of the Trump presidency.

But, thank heavens, in stark contrast to Trump administration officials obliterating EPA, the UN is on the warpath, warning of “catastrophic consequences” from use of pesticides, claiming manufacturers systematically deny any harm and use unethical marketing tactics. After all, it’s a $50B industry on a dollars and cents basis worth the risk to chemical manufacturers to hoodwink the public as long as possible. Legal fees are easily paid out of profits to defend lawsuits.

According to the UN, 200,000 people die each year from acute poisoning, and who could possibly know of the numbers of cases of cancer or Parkinson’s or liver failure. Nobody knows, and therein lies the heart of the problem of “not knowing” what nobody knows (not a quote by Donald Rumsfeld).

It is worthwhile taking note that pesticides are found in honey around the world. Yes, honey, the stuff people like to spread on bread and eat, lots and lots of honey. Here’s a quote from Science Magazine, Pesticides Found in Honey Around the World, Oct. 4, 2017:

“Insecticides are cropping up in honey samples from around the world, a new study finds, suggesting that bees and other pollinators are being widely exposed to these dangerous chemicals.”

No kidding, that’s exactly why insect abundance has plummeted by 75%. Nothing could be worse, other than a Trump nuke attack simultaneously on both North Korea and Iran. That would likely knock out the remaining 25% insect population. Then, who knows what?